22 - Ares
ARES
The bar wasn’t busy. That was the point. Low lights. A few regulars. A game on TV no one really cared about. It was the kind of place where no one asked questions, and nobody cared what you were talking about.
Grayson picked it, of course.
He sat across from me now, one arm draped over the back of the booth. The beer in front of him was virtually untouched.
I took a long, slow pull from mine. The beer was cold. Bitter. Exactly the way I wanted it.
“You’ve been off,” he said.
Straight to it. I didn’t even look at him.
“I’ve been playing fine.”
“Didn’t say you weren’t.”
I took another drink. This time I set the bottle down harder than I needed to.
He let the silence stretch out for a while. That was his thing, really. Grayson was one of the few people I knew who realized the importance of saying nothing. People generally talked, if you only let them.
“You still think she’s involved?” he finally asked.
I leaned back slightly, dragging a hand over the back of my neck. Did I? A few days ago, that answer would’ve been easy. But now—
“I don’t know,” I exhaled slowly.
Grayson’s right eyebrow arched upward, independent of the left. That alone told me he hadn’t expected my answer.
“She shows up,” I went on, “right after Sutherland gets cut. After Trees gets canned. Starts telling us how to play, like she’s been here the whole time.”
“All true,” he said.
“Yeah.”
I stared down at the table for a second. It was all water stains and scratches.
“But…”
The word sat there, like it didn’t belong. I didn’t like it.
“But?”
I shook my head, once. “She doesn’t act like someone with an angle,” I said. “Not a good one, anyway.”
Grayson finally picked up his beer. A faint smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth.
“That’s your read?”
“That’s what I see.”
“That’s new.”
Yeah.
It was.
“She could still be connected,” I added, taking another drink. “Doesn’t mean she’s clean.”
Grayson nodded slowly.
“Agreed.”
More silence settled over the table. We held our beers, twirling them between our fingers.
Both of us… thinking.
“You talked to Sutherland?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “You?”
I shook my head. “Guy disappears like that, something’s off.”
“He didn’t disappear,” Grayson said. “He got traded.”
“Yeah. And then what?”
Grayson didn’t answer right away. There wasn’t a good answer.
“Trees didn’t want him gone,” I added. “You know that.”
“I do.”
“Management did.”
Grayson took a pull from his beer and sighed.
“Yeah, well… he was losing.”
I scowled a little.
“We were losing,” I said. “All of us. As a team.”
He looked left and right, then leaned in a little.
“Were we?”
The song on the jukebox changed. A few of the cuter girls in the back started dancing. For once, neither of us cared.
“He let up a lot of goals,” Grayson went on. “Way more than normal. And not just on broken coverage, either. Those last few weeks…”
“It was like he had a hole in his blocker,” I finished for him.
Grayson nodded. “He was full of holes. I pulled him aside once or twice, but he scoffed and waved me away.”
“So you think management did the right thing?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Not when it comes to Trees,” he said. “But Sutherland?”
Grayson rubbed at his jaw, as if it hurt. It was one of the things he did, when he was thinking.
“Have you checked his stats lately?” he asked.
“You mean with the Sentinels?” I nodded. “Yeah. They’re on a serious fucking run.”
“Not just the Sentinels,” he argued. “Carter Sutherland’s stats in particular.”
Now it was my turn to shake my head. I hadn’t.
“He’s unstoppable right now,” Grayson said. “His save percentage is off the charts. Goals against average is just under two.”
I let out a low whistle.
“Shit. Didn’t realize.”
“Yeah.”
“Good for him,” I said, tilting my beer back. “He must be really gelling with the new team.”
Grayson paused. Just a little longer than normal.
“Yeah,” he said flatly. “That’s probably it.”
I watched my friend carefully as I took an intentionally slow pull. His expression didn’t seem to agree with the words coming out of his mouth. It was a little weird.
Then again, lots of things had been weird lately.
I set my beer down and stared at it, letting my mind drift. Of course, it drifted straight back to her. The way she didn’t look away. The way she pushed back.
Most people didn’t do that. Most people knew better.
Didn’t matter how many times I told myself to let it go, either. I couldn’t stop thinking about the hot house. The way she’d looked at me, like she wasn’t afraid of anything I threw at her.
The way the sweat pooled in the hollow of her throat, right above her—
I exhaled, hard.
“You alright?” Grayson asked.
“Fine.”
It was a lie, and he knew it. Not that it mattered. I’d been fine my whole life.
Fine meant controlled.
Fine meant contained.
Fine meant nothing got close enough to matter.
That’s how it worked. That’s how it always worked.
Things started fast — too fast — too intense. Didn’t matter who it was, or how it went down. It always ended one of two ways:
They pulled back…
Or I did.
First. Before it got to that point. Before it turned into something I couldn’t control.
No one stays. I’d learned that lesson early. I’d seen it with my mother, my father.
I didn’t need to learn it again.
“So you don’t trust her,” Grayson was saying.
I opened my eyes.
“No.”
He nodded, once.
“So what’s the problem?”
I let out a short, humorless breath.
“The problem is, I don’t like not knowing.”
Grayson smirked slightly. “Welcome to the club.”
I looked down at my beer again. Not only was it empty, but the label was peeled halfway off. I didn’t remember doing either.
“I dunno,” I rambled. “There’s something off about her. She doesn’t fit.”
“In what way?”
I looked up again, and met his eyes.
“She should’ve cracked by now. Everything we’ve done…”
He sighed and looked away, uncomfortably.
“Anyone else,” I went on, “we put them through that? They fold. They leave.”
“And she hasn’t.”
“No.”
He thought about it for a moment, and shrugged.
“She’s stubborn. I’ll give her that.”
Putting his fingers together, he flicked a piece of torn beer label off the table, absently.
“But there’s something else,” he went on. “Something I can’t wrap my head around.”
Now he had my interest. I sat up.
“What?”
“She’s actually working.”
Fuck. I’d noticed it too. I was hoping it was just me.
Apparently not.
“When she showed up clutching that tablet, I thought it was a joke,” Grayson said. “I thought she’d bring chaos.”
I noticed my thumb was moving on its own. Peeling the rest of my beer label off.
“But she actually straightened some things out for us,” he finished.
I lowered my head again, unwilling to admit any of these things.
Haven’s subtle changes and recommendations had been helpful.
Even more invaluable; her in-depth analysis of our opponents.
She had the coach’s ear, as well. Mercer challenged her in places where his experience ran deep, but he’d been smart enough to defer to her when it didn’t.
“She’s not one of us,” I growled. “And I don’t think she’ll ever be.”
“No,” agreed Grayson. “Probably not.”
He looked more relaxed now, more casual. Raising his arm, he called for two more beers.
“Even so, there’s one thing I like better than everything else,” Grayson declared. “Spreadsheet, or no Spreadsheet.”
I smirked knowingly, as a smile finally played across his face.
“Winning.”